Mechanical Man
Mechanical Man is a cartoon short by Walter Lantz that features Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. It is the 54th Oswald short by Lantz and the 107th in the entire series. Plot summary The cartoon begins inside a house (possibly Oswald's or someone else's). In there, Oswald and the girl beagle were enjoying together, playing a piano. Having fun also were and dancing candle stand and two mice playing the accordion. The scene moves to a laboratory a few miles away. A mad scientist was completing construction of a robot and activates it. To the scientist's dismay, the robot began swinging punches at him. Able to dodge all the robot's attacks, the mad scientist stopped the humanoid machine with a punch of his own. He soon learned that his creation needed one more thing, a heart. Back in Oswald's place, the two friends decided to play hide-and-seek. Oswald was "it" and the girl beagle became the one to hide. While the rabbit was counting, his playmate has yet to look for a hiding place. Without a warning, the mad scientist grabs the girl beagle straight from a window, leaves a sack, and flees. Convinced that the girl beagle was hiding in the sack, Oswald approached and opened it. To his surprise, what came out was a marching flute player. Hopefully, Oswald wasn't left without a clue when he noticed a strand of thread by the window (The thread was actually the trousers of the mad scientist who will later appear in spotted shorts.). At the laboratory, the mad scientist had the girl beagle wedged in a vise and plans to perform surgery on her, i.e. take out her heart and put it in the robot. But before he could start, the mad scientist learns that someone arrived at his place. That someone turned out to be Oswald who reached the lab by following the strand of thread. As Oswald knocked on the laboratory's front door, a trap was activated, causing him to fall into a shoot which leads to the basement. In an attempt to slaughter Oswald, the mad scientist waits for the little rabbit's arrival at other end of the shoot, planning to swing an ax. The mad scientist swings but misses. From there, the chase begins. In looking for a place to hide, Oswald enter a door labeled "exit." Less than ten seconds later, he got out. Coming out of the door also was a disturbed skeleton who replaces the door sign with "private" and goes back in. Running through the corridors of the laboratory, Oswald hoped he wouldn't be confronted by another skeleton. While approaching an intersection, he saw something white popping in and out of the left corner. For his defense, Oswald picked up a nearby urn. There was indeed a skeleton innocently standing by the left corner but the mad scientist, who was coming from the corridor in that direction, pulled it away. As the mad scientist entered rabbit's hallway, Oswald tosses the urn. The mad scientist was strucked right in head and was knocked cold. Oswald finds a rope and ties one end of it around the scientist's leg, the other end around a lion's tail. The lion ran in place and the mad scientist was held above the floor. Oswald, at last, found the chamber where the girl beagle was held. He loosens the vise and frees her. Edited VHS Guild/Firelight Print Walter Lantz and Universal released the cartoon on a VHS video tape on public known as the Guild/Firelight reissue print (VHS; Video Yesteryear), which had better quality and better audio, but it still had the re-used title. However, many scenes were cut on its release, like the scene where Pete says This thing needs a human heart, I'll get one; another scene where Pete yells at a skunk by saying get busy; and the final scene cut shows Pete taking the heart out of Kitty's mouth, however the heart later gets back in. Even though it was released on VHS, it was never released on DVD at all, not even the original Guid/Firelight Reissue print, not even the original version of the cartoon as well. Adaptations Other animators created their versions of this story. The characters that starred in those versions include: Mickey Mouse, Bosko the Talk-Ink Kid and Flip the Frog. See also *List of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit shorts External links * Category:Episodes Category:Oswald Cartoons